Zoo News Digest is the longest established and most widely read listing of current 'zoo' related news on the internet. It notes 'real' events of interest to people working within the zoo industry. By a Zoo Professional for Zoo Professionals and other interested parties. The Digest includes comments and notification of courses and events.

Sunday, December 6, 2015

Zoo News Digest 1st - 6th December 2015 (ZooNews 916)

Dear Colleague,

The Tiger and the
Goat story is still attracting a lot of attention from the Worlds press. It
isn't as if there isn't more interesting and important stories out there but,
for them, public titillation always comes first. I have not included more on
this. So which links attracted the most views on Facebook ZooNews Digest this
week? These were those relating to sad individual who jumped into the Polar
Bear enclosure in Copenhagen Zoo. Following on in second place was the post
about the Hibernating primate and third "The loneliest frog in the
world"…now that surprised me.

The story of the 39
year old lion….I don't believe it was that old.

The Curraghs
Wildlife Park is rightfully proud of their involvement in the Silvery Gibbon
Breeding Programme. These Gibbons are going to need all the help that they can
get. It was this week I learned that baby Silvery Gibbons are now being
smuggled into the UAE in not insignificant numbers. Other gibbons too…the
latest fad of the wealthy and the ignorant.

I am heading off to
Cairo tomorrow for a few days. All work and no play so I am none too sure if
will be able to follow and get too many links out…but I will try.

I remain committed to the work of GOOD zoos,

********

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Interesting Links

The Loneliest Frog in the World

Every morning when
Mark Mandica opens the door, he feels a pit in his stomach. He knows that today
could be the day that he discovers the last Rabbs' Fringe-limbed tree frog has
passed away. When that day comes, his species will be extinct forever - another
in a long and growing list of animals that are disappearing at an alarming
rate. He will close his eyes, and his kind will vanish from the face of the
Earth forever. Many of these species will disappear without even a mention from
the media.

"It's kind of
nerve-racking taking care of him, knowing he's the last one of his kind,"
says Mark, the Amphibian Conservation Coordinator at the Atlanta Botanical
Garden. He admits he was not much of a conservationist when he first became
fascinated with amphibians. "I was more interested studying how fast their
tongues move to catch prey, not much to do with conservation. Since then it has
become harder and harder to find frogs and amphibians and so now I feel
obligated to help conserve these amazing and vital creatures. It's sort of an
'all hands on deck' situation."

It was Mark's young
son Anthony who nick-named the frog "Toughie." When asked why he
picked that name, six-year-old Anthony exclaims, "Because he's the only
one that made it!"

Toughie is
originally from the lush rainforests of Panama, where he used to spread his
large webbed hands and could glide for up to 3

Chinese leader caught on CCTV petting pangolin,
elephants in Zim

Wondering what else
Chinese president Xi Jinping did during his whistle stop tour of Harare this
week?

As Zimbabwe's
finance ministry put out a statement on Friday on the visit that gives a more
measured view of the much-trumpeted "mega-deals" signed between the
two governments, footage has emerged of the Chinese leader feeding giraffes and
petting baby elephants during a visit to a wildlife park near the capital.

Posted on YouTube,
the footage, taken by CCTV, shows Xi at the Wild is Life Sanctuary. He and his
wife Peng Liyuan are also f

In September China
and the US, the worlds’ two largest markets for illegal ivory, agreed to
“nearly complete” bans on all ivory imports, a move praised by conservation
groups worldwide. Now, at a conference in Johannesburg, retired Chinese
diplomat Yuxiao Zhou highlighted the Chinese government’s growing concern at
the country’s poor image in respect of the illegal wildlife trade. Businessman
Si Hai, chairman of the Southern Africa Shanghai Industrial and Commercial
Liaison Association, said “We are willing to participate and lend support to
efforts to stop illegal trade – if we can help we will certainly do so”.

Where should US chimpanzees live?

Ongoing decisions
and news coverage about US chimpanzee research have provoked continuing debate
and raised questions about the best course of action for the animals, science,
and public interests. Like many complex, emotional, topics the arguments and language
that have surrounded the discussion have been polarized and have left many with
impressions that are less than accurate. In turn, thoughtful and serious
consideration has often been stymied.

One of the primary
areas of confusion surrounds what exactly is meant by the term “research.”
Another is what standards of care best provide for chimpanzees’ welfare. Here
we cover some common questions about chimpanzee research in the US and the
implications and consequences of decisions about chimpanzees living in
dedicated research facilities. We also highlight and compare standards for
care, external oversight, and public transparency for chimpanzees living in
different settings in the US. We share two documents that provide details about
the many scientific discoveries published over the past several years from
scientists working in dedicated chimpanzee research facilities. One is a list
of over 175 representative publications from recent years. The great majority
of these scientific publications report discoveries from

A Legal Victory and a Strong Message

Beluga whales are
the large, white, rubbery-looking dolphins found in Arctic seas in the Northern
Hemisphere. Their whimsical faces and white, supple bodies make them a favorite
of aquariums around the world. Unfortunately, the trade in captive beluga whales,
like dolphins and orcas, is growing tremendously as new aquariums are being
built, especially in Asia and the Middle East. Beluga whales require special
conditions, including chilled seawater, and they still do not thrive - nor are
they ever likely to - in small tanks in captivity.

Hence the proposal
in June 2012 by the Georgia Aquarium to import 18 beluga whales caught in
Russia to replenish the captive population in the US. The Georgia Aquarium
itself lost two newborn beluga whales that died shortly after birth. Just in
the past month, two adults have recently died at

How a giraffe expert is working to protect their
genetic future

Jason Pootoolal is
well known in the giraffe world.

Pootoolal, giraffe
and hoof supervisor at African Lion Safari, was the first in Canada to
impregnate one of the animals through artificial insemination. And another baby
is on the way, this time through frozen semen insemination.

At the Flamborough
facility, Pootoolal works on techniques to save and use genetic material to
continue the population of the Rothschild giraffe, a breed so rare that only
about 1,000 remain in the world.

What Is Taxonomic Order And Why Is It Used For The
Sequence Of Birds In My Field Guide?

Most field guides
and checklists present birds in taxonomic order, which represents our best
understanding of the evolutionary relationships between bird families.
Generally speaking, the groups at the front of the list are thought to have
split off earlier from the common ancestor of all birds, or what is called the
“root” of the bird tree of life. (That common ancestor is now known to have
been a theropod dinosaur.)

Before the advent of
DNA sequencing, overall taxonomic order was based on such factors as where a
bird first appears in the fossil record, and on similarities in physical
features (morphology) among families.

Modern advances in
gene sequencing have revolutionized our understanding of these relationships.
Morphological and fossil evidence are still used, but the information from the
genomes (DNA) of birds has led to major updates in taxonomic order in the most
recently published guides compared to ones from 20 or even 10 years ago.

A case in point:
falcons have long been grouped with the other raptors such as hawks and eagles,
but DNA evidence now shows that they are most closely related to parrots. So

The Antwerp zoo has been evacuated following a bomb
alert

The Antwerp zoo,
situated at the Reine Astrid place, has been completely evacuated Thursday
afternoon around 14h00, following a telephone conversation indicating that
there was a bomb inside the zoo, local police released in a statement.

Since there are
ongoing renovations at the zoo only few visitors had to be escorted out. The
police is currently carrying out a search at the site and has also brought in
sniffing dogs to assist them.

The police is clear
that the alert only concerns the zoo and not the Antwerp station that is close
to it.

Antwerp has received
several bomb alerts the last few wee

INNOVATIVE APPROACH FORGES RHINO FOOTWEAR

An angel gets its
wings, and at Fossil Rim Wildlife Center, a rhino gets her boots.

Coco, a 25-year-old
southern black rhino, has lived at Fossil Rim since 1995. At age six, she began
to have issues with her right front foot.

“We’ve treated it a
number of different ways,” said veterinarian Dr. Holly Haefele, director of
animal health. “In 2009, we put a boot on for about a month and got good
resolution to the problem for about five years. In August 2014, she started
having trouble with the right front again. We think there potentially used to
be (a foreign object) in there that flared up in the foot pad and opened up a
hole.

“Even if nothing is
in there any longer, maybe now it’s hard for normal tissue to grow back. We
tried to address it again last spring, but we’ve had trouble

Echidnas Have Sex Half A Penis At A Time

What do you do when
you work at a zoo, with an outreach program designed to give the public an
up-close look at the safer animals in your care, and the animal you’re showing
off gets an erection? If you work at the Currumbin Wildlife Sanctuary, you get
to work.

Zookeepers handling
a short-beaked echidna took what they had to work with and conditioned the
echidna, over two weeks and out of the public eye, to maintain its erection
until it ejaculated. They noticed a couple of odd things along the way. The
first was that the echidna ejaculated bundles of sperm, which glommed together
in order to swim faster th

Grizzly Bears Can Eat 40,000 Moths in a Day

Grizzly bears will
eat just about anything. They make a living by consuming whatever is edible in
their immediate surroundings, happily dining on huckleberries, dead animals,
small mammals like rodents, nuts, fish, or, occasionally, human food.

As seen in the film
Wild Yellowstone, which debuts this Sunday (Dec. 6) at 9 p.m. ET on Nat Geo
Wild, grizzlies also voyage way up into the seemingly barren, rock-strewn
highlands of mountains. For decades, people have witnessed grizzlies in these
locations, puzzled as to why the bears would make their way up there. But why
would they go to a virtually life- and food-less area, above nearly all
vegetation and animal inhabitants?

Researcher Don White
Jr. set out to get to the bottom of this enigma when he began studying grizzly
bears in Glacier National Park in the 1990s. He soon found out—and Wild
Yellowstone reveals—the reason the bears climbed to such frosty, rocky heights:
to dine on moths. Lots and lots of moths, says White, who is now a wildlife
ecologist at the University of Arkansas-Monticello. His calculat

There was tension in
Jos as police and soldiers spent the day trying to track the animal down.

The police say the
lion was hostile during attempts to get it back to the cage and it was killed
before it could harm any

They were wrong to kill lion on the loose in Jos –
Runsewe, ex-NTDC boss

There was tension in
Jos, the capital of Plateau State,
Wednesday when it was learnt that a lion escaped from Jos Wildlife Park at feeding time, before it
was killed. Many felt it was wrong to
have killed the lion instead of
tranquilising it. On inquiry from tourism officials of the Plateau
Tourism Corporation on why the lion,
which had been caged since 1972, was shot, they said the zoo lacked the
equipment to tranquilise it.

The officials, who
did not want to be named, disclosed that a former Director General, Nigerian
Tourism Development Corporation, Otunba Segun Runsewe, had warned of impending danger when he saw the condition of the zoo as he
was said to have written to the state government on it then. This led our reporter to go after Runsewe, who had
gone under ground since he was unceremoniously removed in 2013, to share his
thoughts on how we can make our zoo tourism friendly. Though, he initially
refused to talk, after much persuasion, he spoke.

Money on Extinction, but Fighting Nonetheless

Species are
disappearing at alarming rates around the globe, yet the vast majority of these
extinction events fail to elicit even the tiniest of sobs from the general
public. As one “enlightened” reviewer of Elizabeth Kolbert’s excellent book The
Sixth Extinction so eloquently put it, “So what if scorpions, polar-bears,
rattlesnakes and sharks go extinct. Who cares??” Well, I care, particularly in
light of last week’s news that the San Diego Zoo was forced to euthanize one of
the four remaining northern white rhinoceroses left on the planet. Now the fate
of the species rests on three elderly individuals and the hope of a successful
in vitro fertilization campaign. My heart is with the rhinos, but my money’s on
extinction.

Munkholm Hoeck says
zookeepers fired several rounds of rubber bullets at the bear to get it to back
off.

On Twitter, police
described the man as "men

Animals should not be outside enclosures, and visitors
need to be more educated - park owner

Wild animals should
never be outside their enclosures while visitors are present but members of the
public have to take greater responsibility for their own safety, according to
the owner of Malta’s only licenced zoo.

Chris Borg, who owns
the Wildlife Park in the limits of Rabat, told the Times of Malta that as wild
animals could react unpredictably around people, repeatedly letting them out
made an accident almost inevitable.

Mr Borg, however,
defended Montekristo owner Charles Polidano, who has been charged over alleged
infringements at his zoo. He insisted Mr Polidano

Speaking out against
the tragic incident when a three-year-old boy was mauled by a tiger at the
illegal Montekristo zoo on Saturday afternoon, Wildlife Park Malta owner Chris
Borg took to Facebook to comment on responsible wild-animal ownership.

The bottom line
which Mr Borg highlighted in his Facebook post was that the animals should
absolutely never be outside of their enclosure when members of the public are
in the vicinity.

“Animals should neve

Doubts raised over zoo handlers’ licence

‘Illegal to take big cats from cage’

The animal handlers
at the Montekristo Animal Park “could not have been licensed” because the whole
zoo has not yet been given the thumbs up, Animal Welfare Commissioner Manuel
Buhagiar said yesterday.

Mr Buhagiar told the
Times of Malta that licences for handlers were granted together with a zoo’s
permits – which have never been issued to the Montekristo Park. “If a permit
for the zoo hasn’t been issued then nothing is in line and nothing is legal – not
even the handlers’ licences, if these have even been issued,” he said when
asked if the zoo’s handlers were registered and adequately trained.

The licences for
handlers as well as for zoos are issued by the Veterinary Services Department.
When contacted, however, department head Robert Balbo would not comment on the
park, which is subject to a magisterial inquiry.

The Montekristo
Animal Park was thrust into the national spotlight last weekend after a
three-year-old boy was injured by an adult tiger

First discovery of a hibernating primate outside
Madagascar

Up to now, three
species of lemurs on Madagascar were the only primates known to hibernate.
Researchers at Vetmeduni Vienna in Austria, now show for the first time that
another primate species that lives in Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos and China, the
pygmy slow loris, also uses hibernation to save energy. The results were
published in Scientific Reports this week

Animal Rights Group Sues San Antonio Zoo

The Animal Legal
Defense Fund (ALDF) made good on its promise to sue the San Antonio Zoo over
Lucky, an Asian elephant animal right groups want removed from the zoo and
transported to an elephant sanctuary in Tennessee.

The lawsuit alleges
the zoo is violating the Endangered Species Act by confining the elephant in
isolation (its last companion was Boo, who was aggressive and euthanized in
2013); by providing insufficient space; by not providing adequate shelter; and
for leaving inappropriate substrate on the exhibit floor. According to the
ALDF, these conditions injure Lucky both physically and psychologically.

“More and more zoos
have admitted that they cannot meet elephants’ complex needs and have closed
their elephant exhibits,” Stephen Wells, executive director of ALDF, says in a
press release. “Instead of acknowledging the obvious — that it cannot meet Lucky’s
needs — the San Antonio Zoo makes excuses about why it is unwilling to allow
her to have a better life. We hope the zoo will choose to let Lucky live o

Actually, it is a
yellow herbal liqueur made from an undisclosed recipe, but actual urine is not
one of the ingredients and is billed as useful for either an aperitif of
digestif

The label is in
Czech and

Bill would allow zoos to breed big cats

If one Michigan
lawmaker is successful, large carnivores will be able to breed at Michigan
zoos.

Republican Sen. Rick
Jones of Grand Ledge announced he plans to introduce a bill allowing breeding
programs for carnivores to begin at five Michigan zoos, including Battle
Creek's Binder Park Zoo, according to a Tuesday news release.

The release said
such breeding was made illegal in the state because of the inhumane conditions
created at exhibits found at roadside attractions. Binder Park and the other
zoos mentioned in the bill — Detroit Zoo, Lansing's Potter Park Zoo, Grand
Rapids' John Ball Zoo and Saginaw's Children's Zoo at Celebration Square — are
members of the American Association of Zoos and Aquariums.

Other groups would
be allowed to breed the animals if they comply with safety, animal welfare and
conservation mandates in the bill.

Animals outlined in
the legislation include lions, cheetahs, tigers, jaguars, leopards and bears.

Binder Park Zoo has
long had a cheetah exhibit,

Wildlife Park chosen for prestigious breeding
programme

The Curraghs
Wildlife Park has been chosen to participate in a prestigious breeding
programme for an endangered animal.

The Ballaugh park is
to house a pair of silvery gibbons with the hope they will mate, contributing
to the survival of the species.

David Cretney MLC,
member of the Department of Environment, Food and Agriculture with
responsibility for the Wildlife Park, said the primates would be the ‘most
high-profile animal ever housed at the park’ and would boost visitor numbers.

The wild silvery
gibbon lives exclusively on the Indonesian island of Java but the population of
2000 is threatened by habitat destruction and the illegal pet trade.

After fears in 2004
that it would become extinct within a decade, the latest International Union
for the Conservation of Nature currently lists it as ‘endangered’.

There are just 42
silvery gibbons in European zoos – more than half of them at Howletts Wild
Animal Park in Kent.

The Aspinall
Foundation, which operates Howletts, and the Javan Primate Project has chosen
the Curraghs Wildlife Park to take part in the European Endangered Species’
breeding programme.

This was after a
rigorous assessm

One penguin is dead and two others are missing
at the Dortmund Zoo and police in Germany say they are investigating a possible
string of crimes there.

One Humboldt penguin
was found dead in the zoo's flamingo cage on Monday morning and two others are
missing, police spokesman Marco Mueller said Tuesday. He says police are trying
to determine if someone stole the birds or if they had somehow escaped.

"The loss
breaks our hearts," zoo director Frank Brandstaetter told reporters in
Dortmund, saying the 1-year-old birds had been born and raised at the zoo.

In November, a
21-year-old sea lion named Holly was found dead in her enclosure at the zoo
with a smashed

Study suggests fish can experience 'emotional fever'

A small team of
researchers from the U.K. and Spain has found via lab study that at least one
type of fish is capable of experiencing 'emotional fever,' which suggests it
may qualify as a sentient being. In their paper published in the journal
Proceedings of the Royal Society B, the team describes their experiments with
stressing zebra fish, how the fish reacted, and why they believe it should now
be added to the list of organisms labeled as sentient beings

Deng took the lion
to Shanghai on March 28 but failed to get the necessary approval from
provincial and city authorities, prosecutors said.

The lion was put on
display in a

South China Tigers Face Grim Survival Conditions

The last time a
South China tiger was seen in the wild was over 30 years ago. Worldwide, there
are only 131 of the highly endangered species, all living in captivity,
according to Chinese zoologists.

Wang Jinjun, deputy
secretary-general of the Chinese Association of Zoological Gardens, said on
Wednesday that not a single South China tiger has been spotted in the wild in
more than 30 years. A species is declared extinct if no members are found in
the wild in 50 years.

Wang said the tiger,
which is indigenous to China, is facing a grim outlook for survival. The
association's latest investigation found that 111 of the tigers are kept in 15
zoos in China, and another 20 are in a South African nature reserve. The tigers
in South Africa are the offspring of five tigers sent from Chinese zoos since
2003.

The zoo in Nanchang,
capital of east China's Jiangxi Province, is home to the highest number of
South China tigers, with 8 male tigers and 16 female tigers.

Kuang Huaming with
the zoo said that the tigers are all descendants of six tigers. The zoo has set
up a team of scientists to select the best mating pair

Floods cause crocodiles to escape Sumatera Zoo

Floods which hit the
district of Permatang Siantar in northern Sumatera resulted in the escape of 18
crocodiles from the zoo last night, according to media reports.

The reptiles emerged
from their enclosure at about 9pm Tuesday after the floodwaters rose as high as
three metres at the Permatang Siantar Zoo, rendering only the roofs visible,
the media quoted the zoo general manager, Nandang Suaida, as saying.

Vacancies in Zoos and Aquariums and Wildlife/Conservation facilities around the World

*****

About me

After more than 47
years working in private, commercial and National zoos in the capacity of
keeper, head keeper and curator Peter Dickinson started to travel. He sold
house and all his possessions and hit the road. He has traveled extensively in
Turkey, Southern India and much of South East Asia before settling in Thailand.
In his travels he has visited well over 200 zoos and writes about these in his
blog http://zoonewsdigest.blogspot.com/

Peter earns his
living as an international independent zoo consultant, critic and writer.
Currently working as Curator of Penguins in Ski Dubai. United Arab Emirates. He
describes himself as an itinerant zoo keeper, a dreamer, a traveller, a people
watcher, a lover, a thinker, a cosmopolitan, a writer, a hedonist, an explorer,
a pantheist, a gastronome, sometime fool, a good friend to some and a pain in
the butt to others.

About Me

I have worked in the zoo world for over 48 years in the capacity of keeper, head keeper and curator. For information related to a zoos, zoo careers and more please see:
http://hubpages.com/_BL29/hub/The-Zoo-Hubs
See also my profile at:
http://www.google.com/profiles/elvinhow